31 October 2012

This morning my wife and I took delivery of 12 cubic yards (!) of hardwood mulch. That's probably about 6000-8000 pounds of mulch, and we need to get it spread in the woods before it becomes even heavier from rain and snow. This will take a while...

Exemplaria published a fascinating article in 1998. Here's part of the abstract:

Shadowy as its source is now, there exists a medieval tale of
theatrical representation that seems almost impossible to believe. It
prompted a series of engaged electronic queries and communications on
the PERFORM discussion group 1 and also (independently) a dose of
skepticism from theorist Richard Schechner, who hastened to emphasize
the vast ideological difference between imitation and reality.Did an
on-stage execution really take place in 1549 in the city of Tournai or
not?

According to somewhat questionable evidence about a biblical drama
performed in Tournai, the “actor” playing Judith actually beheaded a
convicted murderer who had briefly assumed the “role” of Holofernes long
enough to be killed during the “play” to thunderous ap- plause. In his
work on the history of French theater in Belgium, Frederic Faber
scrupulously reconstructs the festive circumstances of this incident
associated with the royal entry of Philip II. [see text image at top]

The source article is long (34 pages), and I can't even begin to do it justice with excerpts, It addresses the (unsolved) question of whether this reported execution in a public theater was real, or legendary, or whether it was "staged." Surprisingly (to me) medieval artists had the capacity to perform impressive "special effects" -

The extraordinary specimen is the larvae of the pink underwing moth, an
endangered species only found in the Australian rainforest. Ecologist
Lui Weber photographed the rare caterpillar, which is characterised by a
set of teeth-like markings set between spots that look like eyes with
large pupils.

There are to be 26 in total, one for each letter of the alphabet, So far, assassin, clue, hearse and pants
have been completed. The animation is inventive, inviting, and
understated, drawing viewers through an old book whose pages inform and
amuse as they turn.

Téviec or Théviec is an island situated to the west of the isthmus of the peninsula of Quiberon, near Saint-Pierre-Quiberon in Brittany, France. The island is an important archaeological site due to its occupation during the Mesolithic
period. Many archaeological finds have been made dating back to over
6,700 years before the present day, including the remains of over 20
people. One of the most remarkable finds was that of the grave of two
young women who had apparently died violently but had received an
elaborate burial under a "roof" of antlers, their bodies decorated with
jewelry made from shells...

In another grave, the skeletons of two women aged 25–35, dubbed the "ladies of Téviec",
were found with signs of violence on both. One had sustained five blows
to the head, two of which would have been fatal, and had received at
least one arrow shot between the eyes. The other had also traces of
injuries.
However, this diagnosis is disputed by some archaeologists, who have
suggested that the weight of earth above the grave may have been
responsible for damaging the skeletons.

The bodies had been buried with great care in a pit that was partly
dug into the ground and covered over with debris from the midden. They
had been protected by a roof made of antlers and provided with a number
of grave goods
including pieces of flint and boar bones, and jewellery made of sea
shells drilled and assembled into necklaces, bracelets and ringlets for
the legs. The grave assemblage was excavated from the site in one piece and is now on display at the museum of prehistory in Toulouse, where its restoration in 2010 earned a national award.

Cloth seals, although small and not much to look at, can give us fascinating insights into the Medieval and Post Medieval cloth trade, which was so important to economies of the period. This lead seal, SOM-B424B7, is of a form typical in England and some adjacent areas of the continent. It is formed of a row of four disks with tabs between. The row was bent in half over the edge of the cloth and a projecting point on one of the small outer disks went through the cloth then through a hole on the other outer disk before being stamped flat to rivet the ends together and to the cloth. The small disks appear plain apart from the raised circle from flattening the rivet...

Seals were attached to cloth at several stages of production. Personal seals might be added by the weaver and dyer, guild seals might also be added to show the quality of the work had been checked and it was of a required length and seals were added to show various taxes has been paid...

Text and image from the Somerset Portable Antiquities Scheme blog. Here are some later-era cloth seals, recovered from the wreck of an East Indiaman in 1805:

When Joseph Faber invented his “amazing talking machine” he had
envisioned somehow connecting it to a telegraph to, converting the dots
and dashes into a real human voice...

In December 1845, Joseph Faber exhibited his “Wonderful Talking
Machine” at the Musical Fund Hall in Philadelphia... Just prior to this public exhibition, Joseph Henry visited Faber’s
workshop to witness a private demonstration... Instead of a hoax, which he had suspected, Henry found a “wonderful
invention” with a variety of potential applications...

Henry observed that sixteen levers or keys “like those of a piano”
projected sixteen elementary sounds by which “every word in all European
languages can be distinctly produced.” A seventeenth key opened and
closed the equivalent of the glottis, an aperture between the vocal
cords. “The plan of the machine is the same as that of the human organs
of speech, the several parts being worked by strings and levers instead
of tendons and muscles.”..

A devout Presbyterian, Henry immediately seized upon the possibility of
having a sermon delivered over the wires to several churches
simultaneously.

By a curious twist of fate, one person who happened to see
the Euphonia in London in 1846 and come away deeply impressed was
Melville Bell, the father of Alexander Graham Bell…

Let’s start with a pair of endings that many people find confusing: -able and -ible... They sound very similar when you say them and they share a main meaning, which is ‘able to be’:

readable

able to be read; easy to read

eatable

able to be eaten; fit to be consumed as food

audible

able to be heard

collapsible

able to be folded into a small space

Why are there two different endings that mean the same? It’s because
of the route by which these endings found their way into English. The
suffix -able comes from French -able or Latin -abilis, while the ending -ible comes from French -ible or Latin -ibilis.

If you don't know the etymology, the following tips may help:

...as a very general rule of thumb, if you choose -able, you’re more likely to be correct. This is because there are hundreds more words spelled with the suffix -able: our online dictionary of current English has around 180 adjectives ending in -ible, compared with over 1,000 that end in -able...

If the stem (the main part of the word that comes before -able or -ible) is a complete word in itself, then the ending is nearly always -able. A simple test is to take away the suffix – does the word still exist as an English word?

Also note:

There’s a very small set of words which you can spell with either -able or -ible, such as extendable and extendible:
both mean ‘able to be extended’ and both endings are acceptable. Any
good dictionary will provide both spellings if they are equally correct.

But...

Sometimes, the different spelling relates to a different meaning...

The example given is contractable vs. contractible. Those few readers to whom this information is important should read the details and exceptions noted at the Oxford Dictionaries source.

Ever look out an airplane’s window and wondered why a row of little fins runs along the upper side of the wing? These vortex generators help prevent a wing from stalling at high angle of attack by keeping flow attached to the surface. Airflow over the vanes creates a tip vortex that
transports the higher-momentum fluid from the freestream closer to the
wing’s surface, increasing the momentum in the boundary layer. As a
result of this momentum exchange, the boundary layer remains attached over a greater chordwise distance. This also increases the effectiveness of trailing-edge control surfaces, like ailerons, on the wing.

...these vortex generators serve another, arguably more economical purpose: They can be very good at reducing drag, which is why you can see them on the roofs of some cars and trucks. One of my aerodynamics teachers even glued them to skaters' legs to make them go faster.

That may sound like a joke but as a result the dutch speed skating team in the Nagano Olympics had special 'go-faster stripes' on their calves. Incidentally, that year the dutch Gianni Romme won the two events he entered (the 5,000 and 10,000m) and broke the world record in both cases. So maybe there was something to this weird hobby.

Anyway, they do this basically in the same way the dimples on golf balls do, by delaying the transition to turbulent flow. Turbulent flow behind a wing/car/ball/leg creates a low pressure region which 'sucks' it back.
In the case of airplane wings, the mini-vortices also create a sort of barrier to the spanwise flow of air on top of the wing, which reduces the size of the big vortices at the wingtip, which are responsible for induced drag.

30 October 2012

A rare crested coua chick, which is being hand-reared at the Wildlife
Conservation Society's Central Park Zoo, displays the markings on the
inside of its mouth as it prepares to receive food from its caretaker.
These markings are unique for each individual chick and fade as the bird
matures. The markings on the inside of a coua chick's beak are believed
to be used by the parents for identification or as a target to aid in
feeding. Crested couas are a species of cuckoo native to Madagascar.

One of the Pictures of the Day at The Telegraph. Fascinating. You learn something every day.Photo credit: Julie Larsen Maher/Sipa USA / Rex Features

Addendum: A big tip of the hat this morning to Pamela Cohen for locating and submitting an excellent link on Mouth Markings of Estrildid Finch Chicks, replete with several dozen photos clearly showing the interspecies differences in the mouth markings. Here are six examples from Australian finches:

Excerpts from the first of three planned Washington Post articles on "The Permanent War" (counterterrorism and targeted killing):

Over the past two years, the Obama
administration has been secretly developing a new blueprint for pursuing
terrorists, a next-generation targeting list called the “disposition
matrix.”

The matrix contains the names of terrorism suspects arrayed
against an accounting of the resources being marshaled to track them
down, including sealed indictments and clandestine operations. U.S.
officials said the database is designed to go beyond existing kill
lists, mapping plans for the “disposition” of suspects beyond the reach
of American drones...

Among senior Obama administration officials, there is a broad
consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least
another decade. Given the way al-Qaeda continues to metastasize, some
officials said no clear end is in sight.

“We can’t possibly kill
everyone who wants to harm us,” a senior administration official said.
“It’s a necessary part of what we do. . . . We’re not going to wind up in 10 years in a world of everybody holding hands and saying, ‘We love America.’ ”...

Targeting lists that were regarded as finite emergency measures after
the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are now fixtures of the national security
apparatus... Less visible is the extent to which Obama has institutionalized the
highly classified practice of targeted killing, transforming ad-hoc
elements into a counterterrorism infrastructure capable of sustaining a
seemingly permanent war...

Before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States recoiled at the idea of targeted killing... Targeted killing is now so routine that the Obama administration has
spent much of the past year codifying and streamlining the processes
that sustain it...

Obama approves the criteria for lists and
signs off on drone strikes outside Pakistan, where decisions on when to
fire are made by the director of the CIA. But aside from Obama’s
presence at “Terror Tuesday” meetings — which generally are devoted to
discussing terrorism threats and trends rather than approving targets —
the president’s involvement is more indirect...

During Monday’s presidential debate, Republican nominee Mitt Romney made
it clear that he would continue the drone campaign. “We can’t kill our
way out of this,” he said, but added later that Obama was “right to up
the usage” of drone strikes and that he would do the same.

What has been created here - permanently institutionalized - is a highly
secretive executive branch agency that simultaneously engages in two
functions: (1) it collects and analyzes massive amounts of surveillance
data about all Americans without any judicial review let alone search
warrants, and (2) creates and implements a "matrix" that determines the
"disposition" of suspects, up to and including execution, without a
whiff of due process or oversight. It is simultaneously a surveillance
state and a secretive, unaccountable judicial body that analyzes who you
are and then decrees what should be done with you, how you should be
"disposed" of, beyond the reach of any minimal accountability or
transparency.

[Madison, Wisconsin] Inspectors found a few dozen local gas stations shortchanging their customers at the pump... About 50 stations throughout southern and southwestern Wisconsin didn't deliver enough fuel...

About 97.9 percent of pumps in 2011 were within the error
rate that's allowed, state data indicate. Only 0.4 percent shortchange
customers...
Of
those that failed tests and had pumps "red-tagged," or shut down until
they're fixed, a station in Monona was off by 5 cents a gallon. Another
pump in Sun Prairie was off by 29 cents a gallon...

State and local inspectors check for errors by pumping five
gallons into their proving devices, which have a level to indicate the
actual amount pumped. Errors are within the allowed range if they're
only a few tablespoons under- or over-delivering...

Chemical engineer Ibrahim Fadl, who owns a business in Manhattan's
Diamond District, strips away the outer layer of a 10-ounce bar of what
he thought was pure gold, sold to him by a customer at his gold refinery
business. The shell peels off like foil on a chocolate bar.

"It's got to be somebody really, really professional," said Fadl. "When I analyzed them, it showed they are tungsten." Tungsten
is a metal used to make military weaponry, drilling equipment and even
jewelry. Gold and tungsten have almost the exact same density, so a
substitution of metals would be difficult to detect.

Ten ounce bars are thicker, making them harder to detect if
counterfeited — the standard X-rays used by dealers don't penetrate deep
enough. Plus, the bars had been sealed and numbered. So whoever did this must
be running an extremely sophisticated operation, Fadl said.

This scam won't affect me, but you should check all of your gold bars right away.

I think the take-home lesson would extend to gold coins or other small gold pieces that the public is more likely to encounter. Be suspicious of any "good deal" on pricing. This excerpt from ZeroHedge:

In the aftermath of the recent stories about
Tungsten-filled 10 ounce gold bars discovered in midtown Manhattan,
there have been two broad sentiments expressed by the precious metals
community: i) that this is as many have expected, and that of the
physical inventory in circulation, much is fake (particularly that held
in official hands, either via ETFs or in sovereign repositories which
for various reasons still can not be publicly assayed) and ii) is the
comfort that while it is relatively easy and cost-effective to use
tungsten to falsify larger gold bars and bricks, those who own primarily
gold coins are safe as for some reason, it is less economic, feasible
or widespread to counterfeit smaller precious metal denominations.
Sadly, while i) may be true, ii) is patently false. The proof comes
courtesy of a firm called ChinaTungsten Online which
proudly markets its broad "tungsten-alloy services" including, you
guessed it, the gold plating of various tungsten formulations among them
"gold" bricks, bars and, yes, coins. Oh did we mention a Chinese
company openly advertizesits tungsten gold-plating and precious metals replication services, something which the tabloid media's
CTRL-C/V majors openly mock as improbable conspiracy theory. Well, as
they say, it is only conspiracy theory until it becomes conspiracy fact.

The Christian does not know that the true spirit of charity which
the Muslim displays, always, towards Jesus and his mother Mary spring from the
fountainhead of his faith- the Holy Quran. He does not know that the Muslim does not take
the holy name of Jesus, in his own language, without saying Hazrat Eesa (meaning revered
Jesus) or Eesa alai-hiss-salaam i.e. (Jesus peace be upon him).

Every time the Muslim mentions the name Jesus (pbuh) without these
words of respect, he would be considered disrespectful, uncouth or barbaric. The Christian
does not know that in the Holy Quran Jesus (pbuh) is mentioned by name five times (5x)
more than the number of times the prophet of Islam is mentioned in the Book of God. To be
exact - twenty five time as against five.

A somewhat inflammatory and controversial comparison made by Andrew Sullivan, based on the electoral map above (swing states with yellow letters), and the 1861 map below -

- colored for their position on slavery. Details at The Dish, where this comment is appended:

I think America is currently in a Cold Civil War. The parties, of
course, have switched sides since the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The party
of the Union and Lincoln is now the Democratic party. The party of the
Confederacy is now the GOP. And racial polarization is at record levels,
with whites entirely responsible for reversing Obama's 2008 inroads
into the old Confederacy in three Southern states...

And finally, here's the "thing you wouldn't know" - what's a "hoople?" The word (presumably a neologism) comes from a novel of the same name:

According to the 1966 review of the novel in Kirkus Reviews,
"Hooples, to clear this up right at the beginning, 'make the whole game
possible, Christmas Clubs especially, politics, advertising agencies,
pay toilets, even popes and mystery novels.' Obviously they're squares
and Mott, Norman Mott, is certainly not...."

Which doesn't make sense, because then the book and the group should have been called "Mott Not the Hoople." Oh, well...

*The version embedded above uses the original "Wendy's stealing clothes from Marks and Sparks [Spencer]" rather than the Bowdlerized "Wendy's stealing clothes from unlocked cars."

The Airline then encodes that information in a barcode that is on the boarding pass it issues. The problem is, the passenger and flight information encoded in
barcode is not encrypted in any way. Using a web site I decoded my
boarding pass for my upcoming trip...

What terrorists or really anyone can do is use a website to decode
the barcode and get the flight information, put it into a text file,
change the 1 to a 3, then use another website to re-encode it into a
barcode. Finally, using a commercial photo-editing program or any
program that can edit graphics replace the barcode in their boarding
pass with the new one they created. Even more scary is that people can
do this to change names. So if they have a fake ID they can use this
method to make a valid boarding pass that matches their fake ID. The
really scary part is this will get past both the TSA document checker,
because the scanners the TSA use are just barcode decoders, they don’t
check against the real time information. So the TSA document checker
will not pick up on the alterations. This means, as long as they sub in 3
they can always use the Pre-Check line.

A South African man armed with a nail cutter is trying to help stamp out
rhino poaching by sending toenail clippings to the Chinese embassy in
Pretoria... Mark Wilby said he wants to make the point that rhino horn, which sells
for prices higher than gold as a traditional Chinese medicine, is made
up of keratin - a protein which is a component in human nails and hair.

26 October 2012

I'd call it a modern version of "alectryomancy" (an ancient form of divination in which the diviner
observes a bird pecking at grain). The Wall Street Journal explains:

It was a typical Sunday evening at Ginny's Little Longhorn Saloon and Bob Gelernter was enjoying the bar's weekly game of bingo...

This sport is known in polite company as chicken-poop bingo. Along
with its cousin, cow-chip bingo, this twist on the church-hall pastime
has proved that an age-old game of chance can cause quite a stir when it
is centered on an animal. At least a few decades old, the chicken
antics have become a popular staple at fairs, festivals and fundraisers
in small-town America, and beyond.

It requires no particular genius to play. Here at Ginny's, an Austin
institution that has been holding the game for a remarkable 11 years,
players put up $2 to place a bet on a 54-number grid. Then Ginny
Kalmbach, the saloon's 77-year-old proprietor, fetches a chicken from an
outside pen, places it on a plywood-covered pool table and waits for
nature to happen...

In Austin, Ginny's says it doesn't take any proceeds from its game. The
Texas Lottery Commission doesn't bother to supervise it anyway; a
spokeswoman there said it "doesn't meet our definition of bingo."..

The article includes the expected protest from a PETA representative:

"A crowded bar or stadium filled with a screaming audience is no more a
proper place for a chicken than a factory farm," says Jane Dollinger, a
spokeswoman for the Virginia-based PETA. "Human beings can come up with a
method of entertainment less thoughtlessly exploitative."

In another version, the observer tethers the bird in the center of a circle, around the perimeter of which is marked the alphabet,
with a piece of grain at each letter. For each grain the bird pecks,
the observer writes down the letter which that grain represents. The
observer also replaces each grain as the bird eats it, so that letters
may be repeated. The sequence of letters recorded will presumably
contain a message. This form of divination is related to Ouija...

I was living in comfortable retirement with my wife, Mathilde, when, at
the age of 71, she received a diagnosis of Waldenstrom’s disease... Then, after seven years, the cancer suddenly turned aggressive and the treatment no longer worked...

But we live in the Netherlands, and here is where our story becomes a
little different. When people become as ill as my wife, with no prospect
of cure and only pain and exhaustion in the offing, it is quite legal
to end one’s life by voluntary euthanasia... We made sure all the doctors who joined our village medical practice
knew our wishes, and we always asked whether they would administer
euthanasia. As an added precaution, Mathilde continued to carry a thick
wad of forms and declarations in her handbag wherever she went, in case
of an accident...

All the doctors agreed to our request. They were from a younger
generation; it is older doctors, mainly, who are reluctant to administer
euthanasia. A few refuse on grounds of principle, others because they
just do not wish to become involved. But more than 80 percent of all
Dutch family doctors, according to a recent large study, report that
they have performed euthanasia at least once, and among the willing
doctors the average rate is once every two or three years...

Euthanasia is by now widely accepted
here. It is supported by the vast majority of the population, of the
medical profession and of the political parties. The costs for it are
borne by our compulsory health insurance, and suicide clauses voiding
life insurance policies have been set aside. Still, it is an onerous
task for the attending physician, and it also demands paperwork and
careful planning. Demands for euthanasia are not made lightly and are
more often denied than granted, largely because of insufficient
forethought...

The law lists four major conditions for
euthanasia. It must be administered by a doctor; the patient must
earnestly desire it, a resolve taken after due deliberation, and freely;
there must be no prospect of recovery and, in the words of the law, the
patient must be suffering unbearably. The attending physician must
confirm that these conditions are met and write a report to this effect...

To the nurse she said, “I am ready” and to me, “I am not afraid.” I
sat on one side of the bed and took her hand, and the doctor, at the
other side, gave her the first injection. She immediately fell
asleep, snoring loudly. The doctor gave her a second injection, and the
snoring stopped. She had died. It was all over in a couple of minutes...

If you wish to comment, please first view the blog post below this one...

Professional contact
juggler here. Just coming in to say that we are all immensely proud of
Yanazo... we've all been passing around this video for weeks. This
performance apparently won him 1st place at the Japanese Juggling
Festival, an event populated almost entirely by Asian jugglers (so you
know the kind of caliber he was up against).

It's not very often that contact jugglers win these sorts of things -
for instance, the last time it happened in the States it was Tony
Duncan winning a gold medal in solo competition with one ball in 1994.

Also, to make this thread more efficient: yes, we have heard of the
Fushigi ball; yes, it is a scam (brought to you by a former Wal-Mart PR
exec); no, those are not Fushigi balls in the video; yes, it is still a
huge sore point with contact jugglers; no, we don't talk to the guy who
did their marketing any more.

EDIT: If you're really really interested in this, especially how to do it, go join the www.contactjuggling.org forums!..

For stage performance I
use a 100m "stage ball," just like Yanazo uses in this video. They're a
soft plastic ball weighing about 200g, usually a little grippy and yes,
perfectly round and balanced. They run about $15 and they're also the
"industry standard" practice ball since you can abuse them pretty
mercilessly (I have one that was thrown into, and rescued from, a
campfire - it's ugly now, but rolls fine).

For close-up performance (street shows and walkaround performance) I
use a 90mm acrylic (the see-through ball) because they have to be
totally seamless if your audience members come within about 2 meters. I
downsize my acrylics a little because they're really heavy, and with
some of the really delicate manipulations a 100mm acrylic is just a
little unwieldy. Acrylics are dangerous (because they're heavy - I've
nearly killed a laptop with one) and fragile (you're out $40 if you drop
it on the street).

You can get them from any shop that sells juggling gear -
domestically I like jugglingstore.com, neonhusky.com, and
renegadejuggling.com. If you're in the UK, oddballs.co.uk and if you're
elsewhere, homeofpoi.com is good too.

24 October 2012

For those (like me) absolutely tired of endless campaigning and politics, there is a discouraging article in Salon today suggesting that there's no way it will stop on November 6.

No matter the results of the election, I can guarantee one thing: The
winner will be widely considered to be completely illegitimate by the
losing side.

The Republicans have now convinced themselves of Romney’s inevitable
victory... If Barack Obama
wins reelection, it will almost certainly be by a slim margin, and I
imagine conservatives have already convinced themselves that that margin
will consist entirely of fraudulent votes...

On the other hand, liberals see, basically, a race in which Obama has
never really trailed, and in which he has a decided Electoral College
advantage. If Romney wins, the massive and growing crusade against
“voter fraud” will certainly receive some of the blame...
Meanwhile, we’re having another of our regular cycle of stories about
how horrible electronic voting is. The machines are easily hacked, many
still provide no paper trail, and all the companies that make them always seem to be invested in and owned by Republicans for some reason. If,
in other words, Romney manages to make his difficult electoral math
work out, and he wins in Ohio, I guarantee we’ll be hearing horror
stories about suppression and “lost” votes for the next year.

There will be one winner. The comedy gods are smiling on Jon Stewart...

The graphic is entitled "All the world's aircraft carriers" (although technically, as noted in the Reddit thread, the left column are "amphibious assault ships" for helicopters and vertical-takeoff aircraft.

"...the most interesting part to me was hearing Conte talk about his
four-month prison sentence at the Taft Correctional Institution (near
Bakersfield, CA). It's a privately-run minimum security federal prison
with 1,700 inmates, and Conte's account of the goings on there is
astounding:

Sports complex "The first morning, when I woke up it
was a kind of university-campus like setting. I walked out and in the
middle of the courtyard was a huge sign that said 'Sports Complex.'
Basketball, football, baseball, soccer, bocce ball, volleyball,
handball...

Rec center ... there were six pool tables, six
foosball tables, six ping-pong tables."

Music department "... this huge music department... We have a routine on Friday nights and the bands play concerts outside.'"

Drugs This is my first 10 minutes -- I was on the
compound I started walking with some guys around the walking track and I
went [sniff] -- 'Are they smoking weed around here?' And they said,
'Yeah! You want some weed?'... But
yeah, anything that you wanted -- alcohol -- any and every type was $25
for 8 ounces. They had meth, they had steroids, they had cocaine."

No fences "...That Christmas, about 25
guys just walked out on the freeway and they had their families pick
them up and they left. So it's kind of an honor system."

Female prison guards as hookers "... they had several really nice-looking female
correctional officers there... And they said 'Listen, you want some action?'
I'm telling you the straight scoop. My understanding is on average they
were making about $30,000 a month."

Further details (and a video of the interview), and a comment thread at BoingBoing. This is the type of for-profit prison facility where white-collar criminals (bankers, lawyers, politicians) would be imprisoned.

23 October 2012

When William Least Heat Moon wrote about his travels across 38 states of the United States on secondary roads in 1981, he was documenting aspects of American life that were already disappearing. Now, thirty years later, even more is gone. This book was a pleasant read that took me months to finish because of competing interests, but its episodic structure made it easy to put down and pick up again weeks later.

I previously wrote a post about "playing the bones" inspired by a chapter in this book. Today I won't present a thorough review - just these excerpts of interesting tidbits.

"The saguaro is ninety percent water, and a big, two-hundred-year-old
cactus may hold a ton of it—a two-year supply. With this weight, a
plant that begins to lean is soon on the ground; one theory now says
that the arms, which begin sprouting only after forty or fifty years
when the cactus has some height, are counterweights to keep the plant
erect."

"It's a peculiarity of history that the milder
tasting grades [of maple syrup] are the most expensive: in the early days when the primay
purpose for maple syrup was to furnish sugar, women didn't want all
their baked good tasting like maple."

"telescope house"
- (eastern shore of Maryland) - "the name derived from the linking of
three houses, each successively larger... for economic reasons..." (as a
family grows). [Pic here].

re Battle of the Wilderness : "On that single day of May 12, nearly thirtteen
thousand men died fighting over one square mile of ground abandoned by
both sides several days later."

The author is adept at clever turns of phrase ("A road so crooked it could run for the legislature"
"The Ponce de Leon Believe Anything Award") and employs a surprisingly broad vocabulary that added quite a few entries to my personal "interesting words" list:

bosky woody; shady; covered with bushescardoon a perennial plant, blanched and eaten like celery (< Ital. cardon = thistle) cockahoop in a state of unrestrained joy or excitationcubby (? related to cubbyhole) (something for a napkin)culch the stones, shells, etc. forming an oyster bed; the spawn; Dial: rubbish, refusedingle a deep dell or hollow, esp closely wooded; to ring as a belldrupe a fruit, as a peach, with skin, pulp, and hard inner shell (<Gk “olive”)

haut-boy an
oboe (<MF haut+bois = high wood)

kilderkin a
unit of capacity usually equal to half a barrel or two firkins

mochila a
flap of leather on a saddle for attachments (<Sp mochil = errand boy)

muntin a
bar for holding the edges of windowpanes within the sash (MF “mount”)

The Hiawatha Trail opened up in 2001 as part of the Rails to Trails
initiative, which seeks to restore life to decommissioned train tracks
across the country. The Milwaukee Road Railway Company had constructed
these tracks between 1906 and 1909, recruiting laborers from around the
world to work on an unprecedented line through the rough and largely
unexplored Bitterroot Mountains...

The conversion of the train tracks to a bike route was an inspired idea.
The Hiawatha is gorgeous, soaring atop pristine forests of white and
lodgepole pine trees, with never-ending views of the Bitterroots. The
path took us through nine tunnels, including the 1.66-mile St. Paul
Tunnel...

And here's the best part. The 15-mile trail can be ridden entirely downhill, with a shuttle bus returning you to your starting point. Sign me up.

22 October 2012

The last time I blogged about CCC stonework at Gooseberry Falls was in midsummer, when the falls themselves were spectacular and I only had time to document the massive stonework known as the "Castle." During my October "blogcation" visit, the falls had dried to a trickle, so I was able to spend my time hiking to other locations.

Gooseberry Falls State Park is located on the North Shore of Lake Superior and because of the rugged scenery and spectacular falls became a major tourist attraction as early as the 1920s when automobile travel became increasingly available to the public.

When the public works projects of the Civilian Conservation Corps were created, one major focus was creation and improvement of infrastructure at state and national parks.

The image above, from a page in the Gooseberry Falls CCC Legacy self-guided tour guide, documents how many CCC projects are incorporated within the state park. Today's post features the "Falls View Shelter" located on the north side of the bridge crossing the river.

When the park was first created, visitors pulled off to the side of Highway 61 at the "Castle" retaining wall/lookout site that I blogged last time, and here at the Visitor Center.

It was constructed in 1938-39 as the last stone construction in the park, requiring 5,300 man-days of labor and over $4,000 in cost of materials; it served as the "Bridgehead Refectory" where visitors could purchase a chocolate malt, sandwiches and refreshments, shop in a "Nature Store," and view exhibits in the Interpretive Center. It served as the primary visitor center until the mid-1990s, when a large new center was built capable of handing the increasing throngs of tourists. When I visited this building, I was the only human being in sight. It's well-preserved as a historical landmark (there may be some administrative or storage function inside).

My interest, of course, was in the stonework -

- which is magnificent in scale and craftsmanship, and to my eye beautiful in design.

Two Italian stone masons, John Berini and Joe Cattaneo, supervised the intricate stone work executed throughout the park using combinations of red, blue, brown and black granite. The red granite was quarried in Duluth near the College of St. Scholastica, while the darker variety was taken from an outcrop near East Beaver Bay, just north of the park. The sand for the mortar was brought from Flood Bay, south of the park, and logs were obtained at Cascade River State Park.

The professional stonemasons supervised a crew of about 20 boys and men brought from the soup kitchens of the Depression-era cities. Some of them did the drilling and blasting of the rock at the quarries, others transported and hand-winched the rocks at the working sites, and the mason trainees cut the rocks to fit the needed spaces.

As with other CCC projects, local material was used, but the stones were transported a significant distance in order to take advantage of the varying colors and textures of the material. A perfectly adequate building could have been constructed using just the black or blue stones, but the pride of a stonemason lies in creating beauty as well as functionality.

The masons liked to brag that the building would still stand even if all the mortar were gone. I have no reason to doubt that - look at the thinness of the mortar separating the stones, which is even more evident in the next building.

The "Water Tower" is located about halfway between the park entrance and the shore of Lake Superior, near the campgrounds. It's a considerable hike from the upper falls, and I couldn't spend any time there because black storm clouds were rolling in and I was on foot.

But look at this stonework:

Again, the mix of colors - the yellow added as a whimsical accent - and the tightness of fit. These blocks were hand-hewn on six or eight or ten faces to fit into a particular site, and on the outside face you can see the the chipping and hacking marks. This is seriously impressive skilled work.

I hope to get back next summer to document the remaining buildings at the park.

I have another 30 to add, but it's almost time for football games to start. The images all come from the relevant Wikipedia page. ("The name "lynx" originated in Middle English via Latin from Greek word "λύγξ", derived from the Indo-European root "*leuk-", meaning "light, brightness", in reference to the luminescence of its reflective eyes.")

20 October 2012

I'm marking the day by devoting all the posts today to articles I have saved from my print editions of Archaeology magazine. I've been setting these aside for years, and it's time to get the material uploaded to the blog.

Passport in Time (PIT) is a volunteer archaeology and historic preservation program of the USDA Forest Service. PIT volunteers work with professional FS archaeologists and historians on national forests throughout the U.S. on such diverse activities as archaeological survey and excavation, rock art restoration, archival research, historic structure restoration, oral history gathering, and analysis and curation of artifacts. The FS professional staff of archaeologists and historians will be your hosts, guides, and co-workers.

Over the years, volunteers have helped us stabilize ancient cliff dwellings in New Mexico, excavate a 10,000-year-old village site in Minnesota, restore a historic lookout tower in Oregon, clean vandalized rock art in Colorado, survey for sites in a rugged Montana wilderness, and excavate a 19th-century Chinese mining site in Hell's Canyon in Idaho.

I have participated in two Passport in Time projects in northern Minnesota and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The top image shows the one of the squares that I and another person excavated as part of this larger project (photo taken during lunch break) -

Passport in Time projects require only enthusiasm, not prior experience. Professional archaeologists are on hand to guide the process, and "old-timers" teach noobs the techniques. It's not always digging - some projects include restoration of historic buildings or mapping of sites.

I set up my tent for free at a beautiful Forestry Service campsite overlooking a lake and enjoyed the sunsets each evening:

Alternatively one can stay at local motels etc (at one's own expense in that case). The "season" is over now, so if you go to the "current projects" link at the Passport in Time website, it will be empty. New ones will be posted in the late winter/early spring as projects are developed and approved, so check back at the website then (and apply early because many of them are oversubscribed).

The other volunteers you will encounter at the projects are some of the nicest people you would ever want to meet, and the Forestry Service rewards the work by adding relevant educational experiences at each location.

In well-thumbed old books, certain
pages are more thumbed—and
therefore dirtier—than others.
What do those pages say about reading
habits? Using a device that measures the
optical density of a reflective surface,
Kathryn Rudy of the University of St.
Andrews in Scotland asked this question
of fifteenth-century personal devotional
prayer books—Books of Hours—
from the Netherlands...

The most popular passages in these
books tended to be prayers related
to indulgences (time off in purgatory
for forgiven sins) and health benefits,
such as protection from plague or St.
Anthony’s fire. Self-interest was the
most common theme. In one manuscript
that had been enhanced with
custom illuminations, the owner primarily
looked at pictures—in particular
one that depicted the owner himself.
"He really loved that image," says Rudy.

One can't help but be reminded of The Name of the Rose. From the September/October issue of Archaeology.

"Tai-wiki-widbee" is an eclectic mix of trivialities, ephemera, curiosities, and exotica with a smattering of current events, social commentary, science, history, English language and literature, videos, and humor. We try to be the cyberequivalent of a Victorian cabinet of curiosities.

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I'm using an old photo of my grandfather as an avatar; he would have been amused.
Readers - especially old friends, classmates, students, former colleagues, and long-lost relatives - are welcome to email me via retag4726 (at) mypacks.net